View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Canadian Journal of Communication (CJC) Research in Brief Innis’ Great Transformation: Staples Thesis/Medium Theory1 Robert E. Babe University of Western Ontario ABSTRACT Harold Innis inaugurated his research into Canadian economic history (staples studies) to countervail the purportedly universalist claims of mainstream economics; he be- lieved the mainstream “justified” exploitation of the developing world by the wealthiest coun- tries. Conversely, he sought out universalist principles in his media/communication work in order to countervail omnipresent misunderstanding in the world; he hoped to establish thereby a common ground conducive to world peace. The dialectic or contradiction of rela- tivism/universalism in Innis’ two major inquiries has hitherto remained unrecognized, and constitutes the focus of this article. KEYWORDS Innis; Dialectic; Staples; Economic theory; Medium theory RÉSUMÉ Harold Innis a entamé sa recherche sur l’histoire économique canadienne (théorie des principales ressources) pour contrer les postulats supposément universels de la science économique traditionnelle; il croyait que le courant traditionnel « justifiait » l’exploitation des pays en voie de développement par les pays les plus riches. Lui au contraire cherchait dans son travail sur les médias et la communication des principes universels qui supplanteraient cette incompréhension répandue dans le monde. Il espérait ainsi établir un terrain d’entente propice à favoriser la paix mondiale. La dialectique ou contradiction entre le relativisme et l’universalisme dans les deux enquêtes majeures effectuées par Innis n’a pas jusqu’à présent été reconnue, et constitue le sujet de cet article. MOTS CLÉS Innis; Dialectique; Principales ressources; Théorie économique; Théorie des médias According to his biographer and friend Donald Creighton, Harold Innis’ first decade of scholarship at the University of Toronto (1920–1930) was filled with frustration and loneliness (Creighton, 1978): he was the only one on staff researching Canadian eco- nomic history, for example, and his book on the fur trade (finally appearing in 1930) had been rejected by several publishers. Moreover, he was then calling for a new eco- nomics to countervail the hegemony of the economics establishment,2 hardly an en- terprise endearing him to the economics mainstream. Indeed, he expressed deep admiration for ostracized economist Thorstein Veblen, a position sure to lose him Robert E. Babe is Professor of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario. Email: [email protected]. Canadian Journal of Communication Vol 40 (2015) 489–501 ©2015 Canadian Journal of Communication Corporation 490 Canadian Journal of Communication, Vol 40 (3) friends and antagonize people (Innis, 1979b). By the early to mid-1930s, however, Innis’ status within the Canadian scholarly establishment had changed dramatically, and by 1940, if not before, he was widely regarded as Canada’s pre-eminent scholar. One might well ask, therefore, why Innis, at the very apex of his career,3 would choose in the 1940s to again become “lonely and intellectually isolated” (Watson, 2006, p. 167), again to inaugurate and develop a line of research that few understood or ap- preciated,4 again to risk ostracism by disputing axioms held as inviolable by the inter- national scholarly elite.5 Numerous commentators have wrestled with these questions. Here I begin by reviewing briefly, but critically, some of that literature. This critical re- view and commentary will help delineate relations between Innis’ staples thesis and his medium theory, and also help identify (in Innis’ eyes) the limitations (or biases) of the former. Commentators’ speculations A complicated and contradictory person Eric Havelock scanned the surface of Innis’ psychological makeup and concluded that Innis “was a complicated and even contradictory person” (1982, p. 17), hinting perhaps that Innis was not quite stable. Maybe that was why he risked throwing so much away! Havelock described Innis also as “the radical conservative of his day” (p. 22), as the proverbial insider-outsider who steadfastly sought after and attained insider status early and at mid-career, but who seemingly repudiated all that in choosing, in his final decade, to again become an outsider. Regarding Innis’ emotional stability, or lack thereof, one could indeed point to Innis’ pessimism, to his tendency to depression,6 and to his “mental breakdown” of 1937 (Creighton, 1978; Watson, 2006). Regarding his purportedly overweening ambi- tion, however, Havelock’s conjectures seem totally off-target. It was not self-aggrandiz- ment or lust for status, as Havelock contends,7 that drove Innis in his early and mid-career. Innis did choose in the 1920s, after all, to inaugurate, in isolation, a new and countervailing approach to economics; he fervently berated the economics main- stream for being (as he saw it) an instrument for economic exploitation (among other non desiderata); he resigned, and later again threatened to resign, from his position at the University of Toronto—in the latter instance to support another outsider, Frank Underhill (with whom he disagreed fervently); he resigned from an office with the Royal Society of Canada on a matter of principle (Creighton, 1980); he continually made disparaging remarks, from at least the mid-1930s, regarding not just the compe- tence but also the integrity of governmental and scholarly elites—including university presidents and other administrators.8 These are not the behaviours or strategies of one lusting after status or power. Far more convincing than Havelock’s conjectures is the proposition that through- out his career, Innis consistently wrote what he thought was most truthful. His pes- simism and skepticism enabled (and indeed perhaps required) him to see matters in ways not conforming to the mainstream. Innis was an “inner-directed,” honest scholar to begin with, and he remained just that until the very end. He eventually received the approval and praise of elites (particularly in Canada), true, but this was due to the Babe Innis’ Staples Thesis/Medium Theory 491 originality and integrity of his staples work (which, incidentally, aligned at the time with the interests of domestic politicians and civil servants intent on furthering Canadian independence). That said, the question still remains: Why would Innis feel the need to change the focus (and indeed the very ontology) of his scholarship, to move from staples to media, and thereby risk misunderstanding and non-acceptance? Testing for bias In 1952, Innis’ colleague, Tom Easterbrook, addressed the American Economics Association to honour the recently deceased Innis. Easterbrook proposed that Innis’ shift from staples to communication/media entailed “no suggestion of a break or loss of continuity or of interests” (1953a, pp. 8–9). At another commemoration, Easterbrook made a similar pronouncement: “Although it is possible to mark out some [phases] in Innis’s work, there is at no point any suggestion of a break or a radical shift in his mode of approach to national or general economic history” (1953b, p. 292). To support these claims, Easterbrook noted (correctly) that Innis had always been intent to test the limits or biases of knowledge. When developing his staples thesis, for example, Easterbrook explained, Innis was testing the limitations of the economics mainstream—and he quoted Innis to that effect (Easterbrook, 1953b). That being said, I must point out that Innis had much more in mind than just testing for bias in developing his staples thesis. Actually, his main mission was the de- velopment of a new economics for emerging economies, such as Canada’s, to countervail the exploitative thrust, as he saw it, of the economics mainstream (Innis, 1972b; 1979a). Throughout his life Innis was always dialectical with regard to the mainstream. To continue, Innis later redeployed in his media/communication work tools he had originally developed to analyze staples (Easterbrook, 1953b), in part (again accord- ing to Easterbrook) to test limitations or biases. And again, Innis himself can be quoted to support this claim (Innis, 1972a). However, once again, I must remark, Easterbrook failed to note that Innis had much bigger fish to fry than just testing for bias. His goals in developing media/communication, in fact, were in important respects antithetical to his goals for his staples work. As developed below, Innis sought after universal un- derstanding to strengthen possibilities for world peace. Paper to media/communication Other commentators suggest that in transitioning to media/communication, Innis merely extended his staples investigations of the timber and paper staples to news, public opinion, propaganda, advertising, and so forth (Berger, 1976; Bickerton, Brooks, & Gagnon, 2006; Heyer, 2003; McLuhan, 1971). The incompleteness (one might say the bias) in this claim, again, is that it fails to recognize that Innis’ communication work is in important aspects antithetical to the staples thesis and that he developed the two bodies of writing for diametrically opposed reasons. As developed below, Innis resolved this dialectical tension only on his deathbed. Donald Creighton (1980), it is true, captured some of the mental anguish Innis must have experienced in transitioning from staples to media. However, Creighton also remarked (consistently with others just cited) that “originally, pulp and paper had